


highs and lows

by theredtailedhawkwithjewelsforeyes



Series: highs and lows [1]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Child Neglect, Childhood Memories, Introspection, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Unreliable Narrator, realizashuns..... it jus makes cents luv xx
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:34:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22394071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theredtailedhawkwithjewelsforeyes/pseuds/theredtailedhawkwithjewelsforeyes
Summary: He is twelve years old, and he is learning. He listens to polished voices, nearly familiar, and soaks them in- he studies the upward tilt of a nose. The people everyone loves most are always talking, always laughing, always happy. He takes it, folds it into himself. Pushes away the angry, the afraid.The world is not kind to children, but there is a respite in its indifference. Jaskier learns how to build himself.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: highs and lows [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1623901
Comments: 112
Kudos: 576
Collections: GERALT AND JASKIER ARE FUCKING GAY





	1. Chapter 1

Jaskier is ten years old when he runs away, a stolen lute in his hands. He has never been outside protective walls- his home, his school. Soft, pale hands put up to his eyes like blinders. 

The world is vibrant. Crueler than he could’ve imagined, brighter than he could ever think. It is not kind to children. He is empty bellied, feral with it. He sinks claws and teeth into everything he can, climbs up bloody, scrapes himself raw. 

Ten years old, barefoot in the winter. He plays clumsily, fingers numb and still learning- he sings, pushes out a bright voice over it all. He gets a coin, perhaps. The world is not kind to children. 

But it is beautiful. The way frost glitters on the street in watery morning sunlight makes his chest feel hollow and filled up all at once- he tries to write about it, but he doesn’t have the words. There are no words for it. Some things are so ugly and beautiful they’re set apart. Dead flowers, the fever-glint in a dying man’s eye. The lovely dark ruby of his blood. 

He holds it tight in his hands, streaked with dirt, blistered from the strings of his lute. He holds it tight, tight, tight. 

-

He is twelve years old, and he is learning. He listens to polished voices, nearly familiar, and soaks them in- he studies the upward tilt of a nose. The people everyone loves most are always talking, always laughing, always happy. He takes it, folds it into himself. Pushes away the angry, the afraid.

The world is not kind to children, but there is a respite in its indifference. Jaskier learns how to build himself. 

A recipe: iron core. Sunshine smile that you can believe. A song, sweet or vulgar but never morose. Sharp eyes to watch, watch, watch. (There is cruelty in indifference, too. No one would notice if the creature Jaskier built disappeared.) 

Beauty in the ice, in the sunlight, in dead, dry grass. People can be beautiful, too. He watches a woman, ordinary, with a child in her arms. The babe is screaming, and her face is gentle as she looks at it. 

Jaskier could write a thousand odes to that woman. Soft, simple. A moment unfiltered. A whole life Jaskier will never know but for her smile. 

A recipe: iron core, sunshine smile, sweet singing, sharp eyes. He mixes the mother’s gentle face into it, carefully. 

-

Jaskier is fourteen. The world is not kind to children and he is not quite a child anymore. He has made a shiny creature and dressed it in silks, and he has fallen in love. 

It’s good to be in love. He knows heartbreak will follow on its heels, because he has spent four years outside his walls and seen it over and over. There’s that familiar empty-full ache when he thinks of it, sees it- love turned to hate, strong and biting and cold. 

It’s fine. It’s good to be in love. It’s good to be in love- he thinks it as sharp kisses are pressed into his lips, biting and rough. It’s bright and real as a diamond, as silk, as the strings of his lute.

His heartbreak is not fire but it bubbles in him anyways. He writes it, sings it, finds another. 

-

Jaskier is- 

It’s hard, sometimes, to tell what’s real and what’s false when he’s made everything himself. Something repeated often enough becomes a habit, becomes a constant, becomes a truth. His smile has the same amount of realness as his street-urchin tension when an alarm bell rings, or someone too big and too drunk gets too close. 

Jaskier is reflexively happy, and people are what they make of themselves. 

There was a boy, eight years old. Angry one moment, bubbling over with joy the next, always filled with bright restless energy. His parents did not keep him. 

He was not Jaskier. He had no iron. He was erased, given a songbird’s voice and flight of fancy, and made new. 

-

He makes himself pretty and bright and delicate. Harmless, but his eyes are sharp sharp sharp. He is twenty- not a child. Unfair world, beauty in fucking everything. 

Ten years old, grimy, clawing his way tooth and nail to now- his hair is clean. He is soft but for the lute-callouses on his fingers. 

He thinks of it, sometimes. Ten years old, freezing every day. The world is not kind to children and you have to fight dirty to survive.

No one would know it. Prideful but true.

-

Beauty in people- simple, small, mundane. 

He meets a Wolf. It’s funny- he’s gruff and violent on the outside, soft on the inside. Jaskier’s opposite. He is in love. 

-

Ten years old. It is cold in the wintertime, but he does not have boots or a cloak. He has a ratty tunic, stolen, and a yellow name that doesn’t quite fit yet. His toes are purple and bare on the ground.

A woman crouches in front of him, holding a loaf of bread. “Eat up, sweetheart,” she says, sympathetically. “You look like you need it.” 

She is not a pretty woman, but Jaskier thinks she is beautiful. Dark, kind eyes. Frail spotted hands, contrasting against cheap bread. She took it from her own basket, and there is little left. The world is not kind, the world is indifferent, the world is cruel, but people can be so, so good. 

He gives her a beam, toothy, and eats it proper and slow even though he is starving. 

-

(A secret he keeps from himself: his life has not been easy and he has been hurt. There are good people and there are bad people, and sometimes it’s so hard to understand which is which. 

A child on the streets. Iron core, but flesh and blood. He’s been hurt. He pushes it down, down, down.)

-

A Witcher is not born a Witcher. A monster is not born a monster. Jaskier is not born singing. But this is how they will die. 

That is the way of things. 

-

“You’re beautiful,” Jaskier tells his Witcher, unashamed. He’s been in love one thousand times before and he’s waiting for his next heartbreak. 

Geralt snorts, and doesn’t say anything. There is a curious look in his eyes. The world has not been kind to him either. Jaskier loves him empty-full the way he loves all beautiful things, and he loves him overflowing. He knows him, iron shell, soft inside. 

-

They pass through Vengerberg. Jaskier takes off his shoes, and Geralt stares at him like he’s gone mad but says nothing. 

The cobblestones feel different under his feet- he doesn’t have his callouses anymore. The streets are still familiar from so long ago. There the alleyway he’d slept- there he’d sat and played his lute for hours and hours and prayed not to frostbite. He sits, thoughtful. 

“This is where the witch is from, isn’t it?” 

Geralt nods- he stands beside him, hands clasped behind his back, looking for all the world like a bodyguard. Jaskier could laugh. He does. He knows it sounds strange. 

A recipe: iron core. Sunshine smile that you can believe. A song, sweet or vulgar but never morose. Sharp eyes to watch, watch, watch. He builds himself up again, slowly, lets his eyes close. He has a watcher. 

Is there any point in saying anything? Probably not. He has never said a word about his past to the Witcher and all he knows in return is from the songs. 

No point. 

“I’ll find you later,” he says. Geralt goes. 

When he was ten years old, he had sat on this spot. Purple toes, empty belly. A reflex learned is not quickly forgotten, and he remembers how it feels to claw his head above the water. He feels it again, still, with his pretty silks and soft skin. 

He remembers, too, words that barely contained their emotions tumbling out of his mouth. Awestruck over glittering frost, a mother and her baby. Clear as anything. These are the easy ones, deep and poignant and sticking. 

When you build yourself, it’s hard to stop. Jaskier erased who he was and kept erasing until all he is is present. His memories feel like dreams, half-formed. The sight of a little shop makes his chest tighten, tighten, tighten, and he doesn’t remember why. Does he want to know? He does- he steps closer, into the shop. It smells musty and he is sick with it and he leaves. A secret he keeps from himself. 

-

“I fell in love in that tavern,” Jaskier tells Geralt. 

“You’ve fallen in love in every tavern,” Geralt replies, just the undercurrent of a laugh on his words. Jaskier rolls his eyes, hits his arm. 

“I mean the first time- I fell in love for the first time in that tavern.” 

A curious look from the corner of the Witcher’s eyes. “In Vengerberg?” 

“Fourteen years old,” Jaskier says. A truth given for free. Jaskier talks on and on but nothing feels heavy in his mouth like this does: mundane, remarkably human. 

“Hmm,” Geralt says. He leads the way inside, and Jaskier is fourteen again, slipping into the warmth with his lute clutched in his hands. Barefoot on the hay-strewn floor. 

He spins, strums a chord on his lute. Plays a song, another, another. Familiar as anything- these are the people that watched him when he was a child. Singing along, now, watching him like he is a  _ somebody _ . Jaskier built himself with iron. He sees eyes that he knows and keeps singing. 

Eyes that he knows. It’s very real, suddenly. He was here a decade ago. Same wooden floors, same lute in his hands, a waver in his voice. A different person, the same person. 

He gets a room- they both get a room. Separate. They have the coin. 

He bathes, dresses back in his silks. Rubs sweet almond oil onto his wrists because he likes the scent of it. 

He leaves his boots where they are. 


	2. Chapter 2

When Jaskier was fourteen years old, he fell in love. 

It was not a nice love. He had thought, at the time, that it might be the kind of love people might write about one hundred years later, but that was just a little before he realized that if there will be anything written about himself he must write it himself. 

It was not a nice love, but it was consuming. Electricity shocks from his fingertips to his shoulders, twisting at his guts, making him shiver in the heat of a fire. When it ends it ends screaming, and that’s good, because it’s good for the tale. 

The world is not kind to children and he is not quite a child anymore. He grows up, quickly and slowly and not at all, and he does not forget his first real story. 

-

He is lying on his back. The ceiling of his room is as familiar as a dream. He is crying before he realizes it- his first story had been a fucking tragedy. A secret he keeps from himself: his life has not been easy and he has been hurt. 

It’s hard to keep a secret when you’re standing in it. Jaskier looks at his room, breathes in the smell of a home half forgotten. When he leaves he leaves barefoot, his lute in his hands. Just as it was. 

-

A memory: Jaskier is eleven. He is standing by the side of the road. His face is dirty, his feet are dirty, his clothes are dirty, but he has lived this way for long enough that it doesn’t matter. There is a sparrow hopping in front of him, and he gives it a crumbled piece of his bread. When it flies away, it leaves him alone. 

Jaskier is eleven. 

When Jaskier is fourteen, he reaches up, up, up and hooks his fingers in a rich velvet jacket. The son of a noble shouldn’t be with a creature of the streets, but Jaskier has learned how to square his shoulders, put a well-spoken lilt in his voice. Flatter with his hands, his words, his eyes. 

Jaskier is twenty-three, singing in a tavern he remembers, when he looks to his right and sees his first story. He gets a room, bathes, dresses, and leaves to seek it again.

-

Jaskier has always done things for the adventure he can write. He doesn’t know if that’s what this is, or if it’s curiosity, or if he just wants to see if he remembers- regardless, he leaves barefoot, lute in his hands. He does not tell his Witcher that he is going. 

He finds his heartbreak outside the door. 

-

Jaskier has always done things for the hurt it will bring. Hurt is what makes a story, a song. 

“Jaskier,” he says, half of a laugh in his voice. “Is that really you?” 

“Aagen,” he says- something repeated enough becomes a habit. His shoulders are squared, his voice is well-turned. “Gods, it’s been ages. Do you-” 

He takes his hand, and he is fourteen again. 

-

“Why do you never have shoes on?” Aagen had asked- they had been in the forest, because Jaskier had thought that might be romantic and Aagen had thought… something. Jaskier never really knew what he was thinking. 

“I just don’t like how they feel,” Jaskier says, shrugging. A lie. He has scraped together coin for a silk doublet and he keeps it carefully, fastidiously clean. His pants are cheap but they are sturdy. He has no money for boots, and he has grown used to the cold. 

Aagen looks at him like he knows all that- not unkindly, but not kind. Concealed disdain hidden behind warm eyes. He is older than Jaskier, a little, and they both know he is more important. He eats breakfast on silver plates and Jaskier steals loaves of bread for supper. They both pretend otherwise, because Jaskier gives him what he needs and Aagen gives him his story. 

“It makes you look like an urchin,” he says, instead, and Jaskier laughs and swats playfully at his shoulder and curls his toes inwards. 

Love is an exchange of values. Jaskier learns that with him. It is dressed up for the tales but it is just this for that. 

When he is twenty-three, pressed into a familiar bed, he remembers the lessons he’d learned. Aagen is important, now, and Jaskier is too in his own false way, and they still have things they can give each other. He arches his back as Aagen bites at his neck and thinks: I am still climbing. I will never stop. 

-

He joins with Geralt the next morning. He is still barefoot, and there are bruises on his throat but that’s hardly usual for him. 

His Witcher gives him a long, searching look. They are sitting in the tavern, and Geralt is halfway through a bowl of thick stew. He sits, builds himself from the inside out. Iron core, sunshine smile. Geralt is not one for personal dramas, but he asks anyway: 

“Where were you?” 

Jaskier shrugs. Jaskier loves him for asking. “Meeting an old friend.” A story must have its beginning and Jaskier has spent far too long stuck in the middle. 

Geralt sniffs at the air, subtly, the way he does when he’s puzzled about something- like a dog, or a wolf. His eyes are hard and soft. Jaskier knows he cares, deep inside, and it’s a good thing to know. He gives him a smile. 

“A friend from…” 

“When I lived here, yeah.” 

Hard soft eyes. The world has not been kind to him and it has not been kind to Jaskier, and both of them are full to the brim of bottled up secrets. Geralt’s face, the set of his shoulders, says: you can continue. I will listen. Jaskier wonders if he will get anything in return. 

Not everything is a transaction. His feet are cold but he’s used to it already, and there are bruises on his neck. He says: “When are we leaving, then?” 

“I have a job,” Geralt admits, almost apologetic behind all the careful layers. He goes back to his soup. The moment is over. Jaskier takes a deep breath, collects himself, returns to his idle chatter, and his Witcher’s shoulders relax. Good. 

-

When Jaskier was twelve, he’d broken an icicle off the low canopy of a little shop with already numb fingers. It was pretty, and sharp, and when he’d put it in his mouth it tasted fresh and clean as spring air. He’d made a song about it, how it made him feel scrubbed clean even though there was still mud on his feet, and he’d sung it for himself. 

(The first real love he’d ever had was the cold. He chases ice. It’s simple and pure and beautiful. It turns you purple and hollows you out, frost glittering. The world is not kind to children and he’d chipped away a home in it anyways.) 

-

This forest is so familiar. Stories must have a beginning and this clearing is Jaskier’s- he’d taken his name from these flowers, spring-buds already fighting their way out of the ground. He picks one, carefully, tucks it behind his ear. He plays his icicle song, half-remembered. He thinks of a kiss he’d had, a fight right there by the trees, and feels almost dizzy with it. 

There’s a naiad in the little river. Jaskier remembers her: they used to sing together. She’d drowned a man- accidentally, she says- and Geralt stands awkwardly, sword by his side, as they dance. 

“You’ve grown, little flower,” she says, voice thickly accented. She touches his nose, his cheek, his forehead. 

“You haven’t,” Jaskier says, grinning. Beautiful things in the world, and she is one he’d forgotten. Lazy summer days spent singing lullabies. Love is an exchange of values and all she’d asked from him was his voice. 

He has been hurt, before, but he’d also been happy. A fact forgotten. 

He hadn’t said goodbye when he’d left, but she is old and she forgives him. He introduces her to Geralt. She laughs. 

“Always seeking a story.” 

“I wouldn’t have killed her,” Geralt says, quietly- Jaskier is bright at his side, humming and happy. “Naiads are not known to be evil.”    


“I know,” Jaskier says, bumping into him and laughing when he’s pushed away. “I know, Witcher.” 

-

Stories are so often black or white. Good or bad. His home is grey, bright and dark. The world is not kind to children but people are what they make of himself. 

He has so often sought out adventures but people can be good and kind and wonderful. A naiad, an old woman with bread to spare. A Witcher at his side, gruff and beautiful. 

He has made a shiny creature and dressed it in silks, and the world is unfair and still he has found sparks of happy brightness. 

-

If there will be anything written about him he must write it himself. A truth he knows. 

He was born in a clearing, spring-bud struggling through frost. He knew cold, he knew pain. He knew the fever-glint in a dying man’s eye and called it beautiful. 

He built himself, inside out. Painted on happy and believed it. Put his heart into loving and had it broken and broken and broken. Come out laughing. 

It’s an ordinary story. That’s what makes it lovely. 

-

Geralt sees Aagen, outside on the street in his pretty clothes. Aagen sees Jaskier. Jaskier is struck, suddenly, by how strange it is to be back here. His Witcher and his first love, looking at each other like there is something crackling in the air. 

His Witcher pretends indifference but Jaskier knows he cares, deep inside. It is a good thing to know. He lifts that nose to smell at the air.

“So you’ve fallen in with a Witcher,” Aagen says, concealed disdain behind warm eyes. Jaskier shrugs, looks down at his feet and back up. Aagen is important and Jaskier is too and there is nothing more he can give him. It’s a nice feeling to have. 

“I suppose I have,” Jaskier says, brightly. Geralt grunts, continues walking like he’s dismissed Aagen as a possible threat, and that makes Jaskier feel all warm. He follows.

A story must have its beginning. This is Jaskier’s: a city of thousands, good and bad and inbetween. He has climbed his way off of the streets but they are still in him, sharp eyes and quick fingers. He has sweet almond oil on his wrists and a flower tucked behind his ear. 

He had forgotten, pushed it down down down, and remembering is as biting as snow. 

He has always chased the cold. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there is a reason i dont generally do chaptered stories and its because im the WORST at plot. this is literally just a shitty collection jaskier remembering his past i guess
> 
> deepest apologies i love you all. im sorry this sucks

**Author's Note:**

> i want to clarify that this is not a stream-of-consciousness narrative style story, it's more of an interpretation of jaskiers like. subconscious? inner process? could i have said that any more pretentiously sorry
> 
> prompt from Directionally-Challenged: "Jaskier's days on the streets as a kid and him reflecting on the good still left throughout the bad." UH its loosely based off of it im sorry i got carried away 
> 
> please tell me if u are getting tired of these like. loose narrative kind of stories. i was intending on chaptering this but i will keep them in the drafts if i am told 
> 
> but if u did like it please consider leaving a comment or messaging me over at redjewelsforeyes.tumblr.com :) ily


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